Mom didn’t inflict fatal beating at New Hartford church

Lucas, 19, died from a blunt force trauma after the ordeal in the “sanctuary room” at the Word of Life Church in New York.

The victims’ parents, Deborah and Bruce Leonard, are not cooperating with investigators and remain in jail on first degree manslaughter charges in the beating death of their 19-year-old son Lucas.

Lucas Leonard and his brother, Christopher Leonard, were struck in the torso and genitals by church members Sunday night during a counseling session, said the New Hartford Police.

On Monday morning, October 12, 2015, it was noticed by church members that he was not breathing and he was transported to the hospital where he died from his injuries.

And after Lucas Leonard was taken to a hospital Monday and police came to suspect his younger brother had also been hurt, their relatives wouldn’t tell officers where Christopher Leonard was, the chief said. Six church members, among them David Morey, 26, of Utica, and Linda Morey, 54, of Utica, and Joseph Irwin, 26, who lives in the church building, have been arrested. Four other people, including the victims’ 33-year-old sister, Sarah Ferguson, have pleaded not guilty to assault. They said they would hear odd chanting coming from the building as late as 3 a.m. “Authorities say more charges and arrests are possible”.

In upstate New York one teenager was killed and another seriously injured after being brutally beaten for hours at a church “counseling session” created to get the teens to confess their sins.

Authorities said the assault was perpetrated by the boys parents, Bruce and Deborah Leonard, and four other church members.

NPR’s Joel Rose tells our Newscast Unit that police say the beatings appear to have taken place during a meeting where the brothers were to ask forgiveness for their sins. The church has existed for as many as 30 years in New Hartford, a once-thriving mill town of 22,000 people about 50 miles from Syracuse.

The attorney for Deborah Leonard said he thought the facts behind the case were peculiar.

They removed several children from the building and turned them over to child protective services. Within hours, a police SWAT team descended on the Leonards’ home in Clayville and the church, where they found his brother on the second floor after several hours of searching.

‘I’m really afraid. In my heart I don’t think this is the first incident, ‘ said Eva Monaghan, who lives around the corner from the church.

The Leonards live in nearby Clayville, a village of 350 people, in a two-story, wood-frame duplex.

“They were really loud and very disruptive”, a neighbor said.

“They weren’t allowed to do normal things, but they tried to be as normal as they could be”, she said. Humble said she used to gie them a few video cassettes of children’s programming, but wouldn’t watch them, “They would not let them watch Mickey Mouse. Around town, it’s considered a cult”.